Washington’s Enron-style accounting is now so widespread and so deeply ingrained, the nation could be bankrupt and not even know it.

You go to work. You save and invest. You vote in the November election. And you assume that everything is business as usual. Then, one day, you wake up to the shocking discovery that it’s not.

Inflation is at least three percentage points worse than what they’re telling you. Unemployment and the budget deficit is over double. The national debt is at least five times bigger than official tallies.

Almost every number coming out of Washington has been thoroughly massaged and greatly distorted, almost always with a bias toward sweeping the dirt under the carpet and sugarcoating the truth.

This is not a conspiracy. It just happens naturally. But that doesn’t diminish the potential impact on your money. It’s easily the greatest scam of all time.

Every single administration — from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush — has succumbed to the same temptation to “reform” the data collection process ... “streamline” the reporting procedures ... and continually implement minor, incremental changes — all to make things look a bit better.

Each new change has been grandfathered in by the next administration.

And the cumulative effect of all these small changes over time adds up to a gross distortion of reality that could directly threaten your financial future.

I examined some of his claims about Consumer Price Inflation, and I do not believe they hold water. I do not believe that we now pay 40% more for everything than we did 5 years ago, which is what it would be if he were correct. Official figures say the difference is about 20%, and I think that is pretty close to the truth.

So if his CPI analysis is so warped, I would not place too much faith in the rest (although I have lost interest in actually checking it.)

Quoting Cfalk (Reply 1):I examined some of his claims about Consumer Price Inflation, and I do not believe they hold water. I do not believe that we now pay 40% more for everything than we did 5 years ago, which is what it would be if he were correct. Official figures say the difference is about 20%, and I think that is pretty close to the truth.

There is actually a small grain of truth to what the OP is saying, because of one of the characteristics of the CPI - that being it does not account for energy and food prices, both of which have increased drastically over the past few years. When you look at the entire consumer basket, including energy and food, you see that those figures could be much higher than CPI would indicate.

As for the unemployment claim, there is again a small grain of truth to it - the US and other Western nations have been hemoraging manufacturing jobs for a long time now, and although employment numbers don't indicate this, many new jobs being created are lower-paying service type jobs rather than primary or secondary industrial jobs.

Beyond those claims, I have a hard time stomaching the rest of that article - much of it seems to be wild claims based on circumstantial evidence.